


Am I Yours?

by Ginipig



Series: Love By Any Other Name [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Sappy, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 21:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20021005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginipig/pseuds/Ginipig
Summary: Alistair chooses a quiet, content moment to ask Cullen an unexpected but weighty question.





	Am I Yours?

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this ficlet came from an unlikely prompt. I kid you not — several months back, I walked into the lunchroom at work to find this:  
>   
> [](https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOMuClbRULhJvT5GHWyDAPEBgdDzzEeLpQ9bMnkgvMID7SMMhFF1FdwrsAmhC1lvQ?key=LTZlcGFibFdldnFkUHZSbGhrNzR2MUQ1dGxoX1NR&source=ctrlq.org)  
>   
> And my weird brain thought, “Huh, that’s kind of a sweet romantic line. I should use that in a story!” So I took the picture to remind myself.
> 
> I found that picture again a few days ago, and it inspired this story.

Cullen lay in bed, exhausted and satisfied, letting the breeze from the hole in his roof cool him and Alistair down after their exertions.

He was on his back, one arm crooked behind his head and the other wrapped around Alistair, who was curled up against him tracing invisible patterns across his chest.

Cullen smiled softly at the ceiling; he couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt more content.

“Cullen?”

Eyes closed and still smiling, Cullen responded with an almost sighed, “Hmm?”

“I … Never mind.”

Cullen’s eyes shot open, and he frowned at the top of Alistair’s head. “What is it?”

Alistair shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. It’s stupid.”

With a finger, Cullen tipped Alistair’s chin up until he could see the lovely golden-brown eyes he adored. The uncertainty in them made his chest tighten.

Right now, with his heart and mind and soul filled to the brim with sweet, gentle love for the man he held in his arms, he would have done anything to bring the omnipresent twinkle back to those eyes.

So he took a page from Alistair’s book and grinned. “The other day I listened, riveted, as you talked about the eleven different cheeses you tasted on your last trip. Your estimation of my reaction seems suspect at best.”

Alistair buried his face in Cullen’s chest, but he couldn’t hide the way his ears pinked. “More like you listened with the patience of Andraste. You don’t have to lie.”

Cullen scoffed. “When have you ever known me to lie?”

Alistair stayed silent. Nor did he move.

Cullen’s heart pounded. Had he done something wrong? Why was Alistair suddenly so embarrassed?

He wrapped his other arm around Alistair and hugged him tightly. “What is it?” he whispered. “You can tell me anything.”

He felt Alistair take a long, deep breath and let it out slowly before turning his face to the side — no longer buried against Cullen, but without looking at him, either.

Alistair resumed running his fingers along Cullen’s chest, but Cullen sensed a nervousness now, when before there was more of an absentmindedness about it.

“I was just … Have you ever watched Josie and Trev?” he asked, using the nickname he’d bestowed upon the Inquisitor (to her delight and Cullen’s chagrin). “I mean, together.”

Cullen raised an eyebrow, even though Alistair couldn’t see it. “I watch them interact daily in the war room. I’m not sure what —”

“I mean _together_ together.” Alistair lifted and turned his head enough to roll his eyes. Then he frowned. “You do know they’re involved, right?”

“Yes!” It was Cullen’s turn to redden. “Of course I know that they’re … intimate.” He cleared his throat. “But no, I’ve never been rude enough to openly watch them.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose! I happened to be walking by and overheard …” Alistair shrugged and dropped his gaze, returning once again to his nervous caresses of Cullen’s chest. “Things.”

As much as Cullen wanted to respect the privacy of the Inquisitor’s relationship, he couldn’t help but ask, “What sorts of things?”

Alistair shrugged again. “Nice things,” he mumbled. “I know Josie’s Antivan and used to be a bard, but Trev … She just — she said something that sounded like she’d ripped it from one of Varric’s romances. It was …”

The rest of his sentence was lost in a muddled murmur spoken into Cullen’s chest.

“It was what?” Cullen asked, keeping his tone gentle. Alistair was rarely reticent or shy except when he was particularly sensitive about a topic, which meant he could be easily hurt, and that was the last thing Cullen wanted.

“Romantic!” Alistair wailed before speaking so quickly Cullen almost couldn’t follow. “It was sweet and adorable and romantic, okay? And maybe I felt a little jealous because it was beautiful and poetic and expressive and I know you’re not like that and that’s okay because I love you for who you are and I don’t need anything else and you’re all I ever wanted and I’m so _lucky_ to have found you or anyone who wants me, much less as I am with all my stupid flaws and —”

“Hush.” Cullen brushed a thumb over Alistair’s mouth, which, to his amazement, ceased moving, and he discovered that once he’d begun to trace Alistair’s lips, he couldn’t stop. Only when Alistair’s eyes fluttered closed did he shift to caressing his cheek instead.

Alistair hummed, lips curling into the soft smile that made Cullen’s heart beat faster every time he saw it.

“What did she say?” he whispered, even though they were alone in his loft behind three separate locked doors. The answer, he knew, would be too intimate for anything louder.

Alistair inhaled a shaky breath and whispered back, eyes still closed, as if he could only speak the words as a secret in the dark. “‘I’m yours, my love, as you are mine.’”

Cullen’s stomach swooped. Maker’s breath, that was romantic. But Alistair was right — Cullen had had a difficult enough time simply saying the words _I love you_ aloud. A turn of phrase as beautiful as the Inquisitor’s lay far beyond his own meager abilities.

“I love you.” Alistair threaded his fingers through Cullen’s unruly curls, and Cullen’s stomach flipped at both the action and the words, both accompanied by a gaze bright and earnest and open — like everything else about Alistair. “No matter what. But — I suppose I’m — I wonder if — am … Am I yours?”

The sheer vulnerability on Alistair’s face, in his shaking voice, in his hopeful, adoring gaze, could have melted Corypheus’s heart.

Cullen’s never stood a chance.

“I — um …” Maker help him. Say something! “That is, er … Do you want to be?”

The moment the words were out of Cullen’s mouth, Alistair’s eyes filled and overflowed with tears, a few dripping onto Cullen’s bare chest.

Alistair reacted first, wiping his face with his hand and once again hiding against Cullen’s chest.

Cullen’s stomach plummeted. Why did he ask such a stupid question? Of course Alistair was his! Maker, but he was hopeless. Alistair deserved so much better.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —”

“No.” A head shake accompanied Alistair’s muffled voice. “It’s not — it’s okay. I just need a minute.”

Insides now in knots, Cullen wrapped his arms tightly around Alistair once again and caressed his back, waiting in agonized silence for Alistair to — if he ever could — return to the conversation.

After a minute or so, Alistair lifted his head, eyes red-rimmed and puffy, face flush.

“Alistair, I’m so sor —”

“You didn’t say anything wrong.” A smirk graced Alistair’s lips. “It was sweet. I should have expected it. You’re always thinking like that.” His voice wavered. “No one’s ever asked me what I wanted, except Duncan … well, and her,” he added, referring to the Hero of Ferelden. “I’ve never been anybody’s. And the first time I ever asked someone if I was theirs, you ask me if I _want_ to be.”

Tears streaked down Alistair’s cheeks again, causing Cullen’s own vision to blur, too. Whenever Cullen thought of Alistair’s difficult and lonely childhood, his chest tightened until it hurt to breathe. No one deserved the abandonment Alistair had suffered. Cullen ached for him.

Loving Alistair was so natural and easy. How could anyone _not_?

“You deserve to be happy,” Cullen whispered, wiping a tear from Alistair’s cheek with his thumb. “And you deserve to be loved in whatever way you want and need to be.”

Alistair smacked Cullen gently on the chest. “Stop it!” he said, voice thick with tears, but smiling through it all. “You’re making this more difficult!”

Cullen couldn’t help smirking through his own tears. “Making what more difficult?”

“Answering your question!” Alistair wiped his eyes roughly and cleared his throat. “I, uh.” His cheeks pinked, his smile suddenly shy. “Yes. I really, really want to be yours. If you’ll have me.”

The air left Cullen’s lungs in a gentle huff, and his heart raced.

“Maker, yes,” he breathed. “You are —” He caressed Alistair’s cheek before resting their foreheads together. “I have never felt anything like this. Yes, my darling, you are mine. Just as I am yours. Now, and always.”

Alistair gasped, his lovely and expressive eyes shining with tears, a grin on his face like none Cullen had seen there before.

He’d long ago realized that Alistair’s grins served many purposes — they could tease, they could show his sense of humor, they could convey his disdain or boredom or hatred. But one thing they always did, no matter what, was hide his own pain. It was a defense mechanism Alistair must have learned as a child, when he’d been the lonely bastard no one liked. Maker knew Cullen had seen those grins enough during training to pick out their different flavors.

But now, for the first time since they’d reconnected, since they’d declared their love, certainly since Hawke died — and perhaps since Cullen had known him — Alistair’s grin hid nothing. It contained no underlying pain.

It was, indeed, truly and utterly happy.

As one, they converged, lips crashing together. Were their kisses made up of a single long one, or a series of short ones on the heels of each other?

Cullen couldn’t tell, and frankly, he couldn’t have cared less.

Whenever one of them remembered to breathe, they broke apart, and one or the other (or both) whispered, “I’m yours.”

Cullen imagined that for Alistair, the phrase was at the same time a question and a confirmation. A comfort. A reminder that he was someone’s. That he was loved.

But Cullen swore the words like a vow — one that meant far more to him than those he’d sworn to the Templars, and more, even, than his loyalty to the Inquisition.

To him, they were a promise. A promise first and foremost to Alistair — to love, to cherish, to _worship_ him like he had always deserved be loved and cherished and worshiped. A promise to stay by his side always.

But they were a promise to himself, as well. A promise to remember that he was loved. That he deserved to be loved. That in spite of all his (many, many) flaws, in spite of his struggles, in spite of everything he’d barely survived until this point, someone loved him. _Alistair_ loved him. He belonged to someone who would never give up on him.

He belonged to Alistair, as Alistair belonged to him.

He lost count of how many times they swore to each other in the dark, their whispers coming more softly and less frequently until Cullen finally drifted into the Fade, the words _I’m yours_ in his ears and on his lips.

If he could fall asleep to them every night and wake up to them every morning for the rest of his life, he would be content.

No. He, like Alistair, would be truly, utterly happy.


End file.
